Bride of Death (Marla Mason)

by T. A. Pratt

  I grunted. “Is it the same for me? Is my goddess-self hanging out somewhere, and I’m just, like, a walking, talking fingernail?”

  “Not at all. You wanted to be human – it’s a bit silly to say you’re ‘mortal,’ really – for half the year, and so you are. The Marla Mason in the room before me, looking so fetching in autopsy-table chic, is all the Marla Mason there is.”

  “That means all the goddess stuff is in me somewhere, then,” I said. “Which explains why I keep getting little... glimpses. I have powers I didn’t used to, and sometimes I have... call them insights, I guess, intuitions that are more reliable than usual.”

  “That makes sense. Your memories and self-knowledge were suppressed, but it’s all still inside you. Or folded up in adjacent dimensions. It’s complicated.”

  I mulled that over. It was giving me ideas. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my clothes?”

  “Sliced off you,” he said. “In a plastic bag over there, though they won’t do you much good in so many pieces. I took the liberty of bringing you some clothing.” He pointed to the floor, at a paper bag I hadn’t noticed before, possibly because it had just appeared. Who the fuck knows what gods can do?

  “It better not be anything slutty,” I said. “I know you enjoy roleplaying, pretending to be a human who gets off on human things.”

  He snorted. “While a black leather corset and stockings are perfectly suitable attire for an avatar of death – at least in some of the comic books I’ve seen – I went a more practical route. I know better than to offer you any help –”

  “This is enough deus ex machina for one day,” I interrupted. “What I’m doing is important – but it’s just as important that I’m the one doing it.”

  “Of course,” he said, entirely too soothingly. “Allow me to give you some information, at least: Your wedding ring, dagger, and axe are with the Eater, I’m afraid – he could sense the magic radiating off the objects. The ring is my gift to you and you alone, and no use to him – though since it only shows possible futures, he hardly needs it.”

  “Tell me the dagger sliced off his fingers, at least.” It had nasty effects on people who picked it up without my permission.

  Death shook his head. “Alas, he must have seen that outcome was likely, because he picked the dagger up with tongs and put it inside a metal box. That blade is worthless to him as well, of course. The ring and the dagger are from our realm... but the axe is an artifact of some other origin, and he may be able to wield its power.”

  “Oh, good, because he didn’t have enough of an advantage.”

  “You have an advantage, too. The Eater is used to seeing the future with trivial ease, and he can’t see you, not in any useful way. You defy cause-and-effect. Someone who becomes that accustomed to knowing the future –”

  “Is probably shit when it comes to improvising and dealing with surprises.”

  “Which are two of your strengths,” he said. “I fear your cursed friend Squat is lost to you, at least for the moment, but I think Nicolette is giving the Eater trouble – she is resistant to his control, for some of the same reasons you are. He can’t cut away and feast on her possible futures, because her future is spoken for – we have decreed that she will serve you for as long as you see fit, and since her futures are tangled with yours, he has difficulty penetrating them as well.”

  “Any idea where she is?”

  “In the Eater’s office, at the moment,” Death said. “In what we might as well call City Hall, though locally I gather it’s called the House of the Eater. They use the same name for the church where they worship him.”

  I grunted. “How’d we miss this guy? Living for four thousand years? Aren’t we supposed to pay attention to unnatural lifespans?”

  Death chuckled. “He has not lived for four thousand years. He exaggerates for effect. More like a thousand.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that all.”

  “Anyway, we don’t police immortals,” Death said. “For one thing, no one’s definitively immortal – time has not ended, after all, and they could still die sometime, so that’s all right. It’s not as if we have a shortage of the dead back home. So what if someone defies death for a while? It would be like worrying about a single salt molecule missing from the whole ocean.”

  “Fine, but if it’s not our department, shouldn’t it be somebody’s? This guy is stealing possible futures, cutting off whole branching universes from being born, right?”

  “Indeed. And feasting on the energy from those aborted timelines.”

  “Well? I’ve dealt with this multiverse crap before, I’ve even been to worlds where other choices were made and new timelines formed, and I know there are people in charge of that stuff. Except not people – gods. Except not gods. Things that are to you and me – well, you, at the moment – as we are to ordinary mortals.”

  “Meta-gods, you might say, yes. Very scary. Well above my pay grade. Comparatively, we are mere custodians. They are architects.”

  “So shouldn’t the architect in charge of maintaining the integrity of reality and the safety of the multiverse be pissed about the Eater devouring possible timelines? That seems like a pretty major violation to me.” I was particularly pissed because I knew the guy who watched to make sure the fabric of reality didn’t get ripped up. Once upon a time he’d been human, and for a brief period, my apprentice. Talk about surpassing the master.

  “I think it’s the drop-in-the-ocean problem again,” Death said. “With every moment, with every decision made, new universes are born, trillions per second, no doubt – why would the guardian of the multiverse notice a few hundred universes that never came into being in the first place? Universes that don’t happen can hardly threaten the integrity of the multiverse. In a field growing full of wheat, the farmer doesn’t pay much attention to the seeds that don’t sprout.”

  “So I’m the only one who cares about the people, then. Great.”

  He shrugged. “You’re human. At least part-time. It’s right that you should care about individual humans. And I’m proud to see you meddling. I think it’s what you were born to do.”

  “Come on. To you, I’m panicking about mayflies, right? Why bother going to all this effort to save people, when they’ll be dead in the blink of an eye anyway? I bet your clocks measure in centuries instead of seconds.”

  “It’s true I have a different perspective than you do. Though with our month-on, month-off schedule, I spend rather a lot of time engaging with the world on the level of human time. But all that aside – even I find the Eater’s actions abhorrent. I don’t think death is so bad, really. The underworld is no more terrible than those who die believe it to be. Sometimes it’s quite lovely. But these poor people aren’t being allowed to die – they are being turned into objects. Machines. Death is my domain, but there is no death without life, and so I believe life is precious. Give them back their lives, Marla. And if that’s not possible, keep the Eater from taking anyone else’s life.”

  He slid off the table, stepped lightly toward me, kissed me on the lips, then strolled away, as always, opening a door that didn’t exist and stepping through.

  This time, though, I caught a glimpse of the place beyond the door. You’re probably thinking fire, or dank caverns, or something like that, but no – it was a perfectly ordinary foyer, maybe a little posh, walls paneled in dark wood, with a little table that held a vase full of pale flowers. And above the table there hung a mirror. I saw my reflection in the mirror, or something like my reflection. It was my face, except paler, and the eyes were dark, as if they were all pupil, no iris or whites. My reflection opened her mouth – even though I didn’t – and revealed a mouth full of pearl-white canines and a black tongue. She mouthed, “We should talk,” just before the door closed (and then ceased to exist).

  “Yeah, no shit,” I said.

  But first I had to escape Eater Memorial Hospital. I hopped off the table and opened up the paper bag Death had brought me. Loose
cotton pants, button-down short-sleeved shirt, jogging bra, socks, and hand-made running shoes, all in black, of course. I rolled my eyes at the underwear, which had little black bows at the sides, but at least they covered my whole ass and didn’t have any unnecessary lace. Everything fit me like tailor-made, which they probably were, assuming the underworld had tailors.

  Once I was dressed, I looked over the tools in the room, considering scalpels and saws, but the problem was, I didn’t want to kill any of the Eater’s thralls – I had enough innocent blood on my conscience for a lifetime. I settled for a steel hammer with a wicked hook at the bottom of the handle, figuring I could drive it into someone’s gut or tap someone on the temple without offing them in the process.

  Before I slipped out of the room, I had the bright idea of checking the doctor for a phone, and lo, he actually had one. I’d worried the Eater communicated with his disciples telepathically or something – or that their lives were so deterministic that they didn’t even need to receive orders, just doing whatever the Eater wanted them to automatically. Maybe that was the case usually, but my arrival had disrupted things. The phone was old-fashioned and dumb, only good for making calls, and it didn’t get any reception here in the bowels of the building, so I pocketed it and peered into the hallway. A boring white corridor, tiled walls and gleaming floors and fluorescent lights overhead. I walked out like I had every reason to be there, looking for signs marked “Exit,” but I guess OSHA didn’t ever visit Moros, because there was basically no signage at all. Fortunately there were no patients, either, at least not down here, and eventually I found a stairwell, and from there, an exit.

  The outside was bright and hot, and I wondered if it was the same day I’d arrived, or the next. Who knew how long it took to recover from having your head twisted nearly right off? I’d emerged on the far side of the hospital, away from City Hall, near an empty parking lot. I kept a lookout for terrifying hordes of children, but so far my revivification and escape had gone unnoticed. I lit out for the steep hillside behind the hospital, scurrying up into the trees and making my way up to the ridge. The sightlines were a bit shit, but I’d probably notice if an army of philosophical zombies came charging up the hill toward me. I found a flattish rock, sat down, and dialed Pelham’s number from memory.

  It rang and rang, which was weird, because he was usually the type to pick up before the first ring even finished – but then, he usually knew it was me calling, and with this random-ass phone... Finally I heard his voice, sounding harried and impatient: “Yes?”

  “Pelly? It’s Marla.”

  His tone changed instantly. “Oh, dear, Mrs. Mason, has something happened to your phone?”

  “Oh, yeah. My phone, my weapons, my potions, my charms, my oracle in a birdcage, my stalwart companion, my just about everything. I took the fight to the Eater, and he kicked my ass. I got away, but only just. I’m in the woods near his lair, and since I don’t like to say I’m hiding, let’s just say I’m regrouping.”

  “Rondeau and I will be there in –”

  “No, no, I’d just lose you, too – the Eater has some heavy mind-control mojo, that’s how he took over my buddy Squat, and every other person in this little toy town. You’d better stay clear. I’ve got a plan, sort of, to take down the Eater and maybe even save Nicolette and definitely to get my shit back, but I need a safe place. I can get out of town, but I need a hidey-hole up, someplace I’ll be hard to track magically. You did so well finding Tolerance for me...”

  “Of course. I will call you back as soon as I can. Please be careful.”

  “I can’t imagine why I’d start being careful now. Thanks, Pelham.”

  I started walking down the other side of the ridge, into the wilderness, wondering how far I’d have to walk before I felt safe, wishing I had my motorcycle. I had no doubt it was still standing in the street where I’d left it – not even the Eater’s magics weren’t sufficient to overcome all its protections – but I wasn’t about to walk over and get it. I should have enchanted my pale horse to drive itself toward me whenever I whistled. The dagger did have that kind of enchantment, and would spring into my hand when called, but the trick only worked at short range, like if it got knocked out of my hand in a fight. I wouldn’t dare put a long-range enchantment on a weapon like that – if I whistled for it from a mile away, it would slice through walls, trees, cows, cars, children, lawnmowers, horses, cattle, mailmen, whatever, on the way back to me. A neat trick, but hardly worth the rather awful possible consequences.

  No, I was on my own, with just my wits... and whatever secrets were buried deep inside my mind. But I was going to excavate those secrets soon.

  ANOTHER GREAT ESCAPE

  I heard people coming so I climbed up a tree, or rather up a pair of trees standing so close together that their branches overlapped and formed a ladder or a cage. Fortunately the pines were thick with needles so I was able to hide myself pretty well. Unfortunately, the pines were thick with needles, so I couldn’t see a thing. I was only a few feet off the ground, and considered going higher, but if the Eater did have hunting parties out for me, I didn’t want to give my position away by making the branches shake and sway.

  For a while there was silence, and I started to wonder if maybe I’d just heard a deer, or whatever fauna calls woods like these home. I was standing on two branches, and had my hands on two others, and I discovered that pine trees bleed sap, which is pretty gross and sticky. (You know I’m not a country girl.) The approaching footsteps got louder, and I was ninety percent sure they were human, but they weren’t talking. I realized I hadn’t heard any of the Eater’s thralls speak, except for Squat, and wondered if that meant Squat still had some unshredded shred of agency, or if the Eater had just wanted him to talk in order to demoralize me. Probably the latter.

  The footsteps were just starting to move away when my stolen phone rang, an annoying up-and-down trilling sound. I fumbled for the phone as fast as I could, trying to figure out how to silence it, cursing the unfamiliar controls.

  Gunfire boomed. Sounded like a shotgun, and from the explosion of pine needles up and to my left, it had been aimed at the tree. None of the shot hit me, but I didn’t want to give the bastards time to reload, so I played dead and just let myself fall out of the tree, tucking in my arms so I wouldn’t bang too many branches on the way down. I hit the ground – which was plenty hard, and not cushioned much by a scattering of pine needles – and tried to look mortally wounded while peering through slit eyelids. I was on my side, one arm tucked under me (with a surprise in my hand), the other flung out in an awkward fashion that I hoped would sell the whole “unconscious” thing. The phone had fallen not far away, and it was still ringing.

  Two people approached – a man in a flannel jacket and a petite teenage girl in, I swear, a frilly white Easter Sunday sort of dress. The girl was the one with the shotgun. The guy just had a baseball bat.

  Clearly they were not trained in the arts of war, because she didn’t unload a point-blank shot into my chest or face to make sure I was dead. Instead they just walked up to me, and stood so close I could have reached out and grabbed their ankles.

  “I don’t see any blood,” the man said. He prodded me with the end of his baseball bat, and I didn’t react.

  “Maybe she healed,” the girl said. Totally missing the fact that my clothes were intact, too. At least I wasn’t dealing with genius detectives here. “She was definitely dead before, we saw her head get twisted around, and she somehow got up again.”

  “It’s strange the Eater didn’t know she would rise from the dead.” I wanted to hear a hint of doubt or defiance in his voice, a questioning of his living god, but instead it was a simple observation.

  “We need not understand to obey.” The girl spoke with the confident devotion of the very young or the thoroughly brainwashed. “Do you have the handcuffs?”

  “I do.”

  If they’d had any sense, she would have covered me with the shotgun while he c
uffed me. Instead, she leaned the shotgun against the tree and took the cuffs from him.

  I rolled onto my back and whipped my hand around, the steel hammer inverted in my grip so the hooked end of the handle sank right into her calf. I twisted and yanked, ripping out a plug of flesh about the size of a thumb. She howled and fell, clutching at her leg. Instead of lunging for the shotgun like a non-idiot, the guy swung his bat at me. He could have pulped my skull if he’d done a good hard overhand swing, like a guy splitting wood with an axe, but instead he did this half-assed sort of sidearm thing, and I jerked my head out of the way, catching the blow on my shoulder. My upper arm went numb, but I’ve got two arms, so fuck it.

  I dropped the hammer and grabbed the bat, rolling over and yanking it out of his grip. Then I bounced up to my feet and grinned at him, doing my best to look like a scary returned-from-the-dead revenant. I suspected the pine needles in my hair spoiled the effect, but he seemed sufficiently wide-eyed and startled. Good. These people needed to be startled. I flipped the bat up into the air and caught it by the grip – a little show-boat-y, I know, but if you can’t have a little drama in your life, what’s the point?

  “I’d rather not bash your brains out, since you’re slaves and everything,” I said. “How about you lay facedown for me, slugger?”

  He glanced at the shotgun, so I swung the bat and cracked him right in the side of his knee. He fell, howling and clutching his cracked kneecap. He wasn’t going to be a problem for a few minutes.

  The girl was trying to scurry away, scooting backwards on her ass. I walked over to her and put my foot down on her wounded leg, just above the injury. “Handcuffs,” I said. She looked up at me, wide-eyed, and then tossed the cuffs toward me. “And the key?” She winced, then tossed that to me, too. “Okay, sweetie, why don’t you hug that tree there?”

  She scooted over to the tree I’d indicated, one small enough that she could reach her arms around it, and embraced the trunk. I cuffed her wrists together. She’d be stuck there until someone came by with a key or a saw. “Don’t suppose you have another set of cuffs?”