The vessel that contained my soul, that had been destined to be the earthly body of the Devourer and which had been forged in the blood of hundreds of victims, was completing itself. The power that Piotr had gathered had only been enough to create the hollow outline of the vessel.
The Devourer was to have fed himself to finish it, to fill in the hollows and turn a pale approximation into the real thing. As much power as the Heart contained, the hunger was equal to it and more.
The thick, corrupted roots racing outward slowed their growth, then stopped. The forest surrounding the grove wailed in my mind and sagged, the transformation of bark and leaf into the gray god’s flesh slowing and stopping and still it wasn’t enough.
The massive tumor of the god’s new body stopped swelling upward and outward. Vines began to break off, dry and brittle, revealing bones inside that were no longer lit from within.
I pulled harder and the Heart itself darkened and went cold. It burst into a cloud of ashes in Hunger’s grip and I fell, the thorns that had held me aloft now as thin and insubstantial as eggshell.
The grove was still, silent but for the cries of a small girl who was still alive.
63
The fox watched me intently as I sat up, its ears forward and nose twitching.
I ran my fingers gingerly over my face and found firm flesh where the empty socket of my left eye had been. Peeling the gummy lids apart proved what I already knew. My eye was restored. Regrown. The old survivor’s guilt touched me, just once, under my breastbone. Hell with it, somebody’s got to be the lucky one. May as well be me.
“You get what you wanted?” My tone was caustic.
The fox walked towards me, blurring and shifting with every step. Native American medicine man wearing a coyote mask. Step. African shaman with a spider drawn on his chest in white paint. Step. Asian woman in a fox fur robe, nine bushy tails adorning her collar.
The woman knelt down next to me. She smelled of juniper and fresh rain. “I hope so.”
“Me, too. It’d be a real shame if you caused all of this for nothing.”
She narrowed her eyes and flashed her small, sharp teeth. “Is the survival of your kind nothing?”
“Don’t blow smoke up my ass. You only care because your own survival depends on us.”
She waved away the distinction. “It was necessary. You were weak. Incomplete. So I created an infant god and fed it to you. Now you’re so much more of what you were intended to be. Not enough to stand against the Powers that are waking underneath us, but closer.” She folded her hands inside her robe and turned her face from me. “You should be more grateful.”
“Yeah, thanks so much for creating an army of monsters that killed half the town so that I could be your pawn in some pissing match down the road. I really appreciate it.”
“Would you have preferred starving? How much longer do you think you had left before the hunger stole your mind? That’s what happened to the Devourer, after all. It was simply left alone too long with the hunger that you now carry inside you. Eons of starvation, unable to die. It’s not the least bit evil. Just insane.”
I shivered despite myself. Before I could reply with some sarcastic comment to hide the fact that she’d touched a nerve, she was gone.
I stood up slowly, enjoying the fact that everything worked fine and easy, as if I hadn’t been full of broken bones and ruptured organs ten minutes ago. I drew in a great, clean lungful of air and let it out with relief.
Despite the fox’s unsettling conversation, my body felt good. Rested. Almost peaceful. And it wasn’t because my chest no longer felt like a sack full of broken glass or because I could see out of both eyes.
I wasn’t hungry. For the first time in months, I felt satiated. Content. Almost drowsy with satisfaction. I knew it couldn’t last, but that was tomorrow’s problem.
Anne’s voice cut through the silence with a whoop. Across the glade, she was hugging a familiar man and his daughter both, her arms thrown wide around them, pounding on his back.
I smiled at her, even though she couldn’t see me. People were stirring, saved from being consumed, and she and Chuck were both alive and celebrating the fact.
But sharing in their joy would have to wait. There’s an order, a protocol that the battlefield drills into you. You do your duty to the fallen before you allow yourself a pat on the back for being among the living.
I looked around for Leon’s body. He’d stopped screaming somewhere between the time I had Hunger pulled halfway through Prime’s neck and when Prime’s body had simply unraveled into nothing.
Not too far away, I saw the Eater shaman hunched over something, its muzzle and front hands wet and bloody. A pair of booted feet were sticking out from underneath its muscular body.
I recognized the boots and started running and waving my arms. “Goddamit! Get away from him!” The last thing I needed was to bring Henry back his nephew’s corpse desecrated and half-eaten.
The Eater looked back over its shoulder at me. Between its bloody teeth was a ropy piece of vine, dripping with gore. Leon’s head lifted off the ground and he propped himself up on one elbow. His thigh was a mess of blood and ripped denim.
“Christ, I thought you were dead,” I said.
“Would have been, except that your number one fan here saved me.”
The Eater dropped the vine and licked its chops noisily. “It waited for Prime to get free of you so that my neck would heal up and then it pinned me down and ripped that shit right out of my leg. Remember the night we brought that wooden bastard into the world? When that vine grew between the sac and my leg so that Prime could feed off of me to grow? Well, when I broke it off, the rest of it stayed inside my leg, keeping us connected. This guy figured it out before Prime came apart and I ended up looking like a plate of goddamn spaghetti.”
I turned to the Eater. “Thanks.”
It stared at me with its lidless black eyes, unmoving. Then it bowed low, tucking its chin and touching the earth with its forehead. It stayed like that for few solemn seconds and then bounded away, following the rest of the pack that was already melting back into the remains of the surrounding woods.
I leaned down and held out a hand, but Leon just shook his head. “Can’t. Getting the vine out meant no more healing from Prime. I guess I just traded my legs so that I could keep on living.”
“Glad to hear that your priorities are a little different than the night we used that thorn. Still not going to be easy, though. You okay with that?”
He grinned at me, wide and toothy. “As we say in the corps, oorah, motherfucker.”
I laughed. “Good enough for me.” I knelt and got one arm behind his shoulders and the other under his knees. He came off the ground like a balloon, weightless.
Together, we gathered up the survivors. It was a long walk back to town and I smiled every step of the way.
Henry’s place became a temporary shelter that night, with Leon and his Aunt Emily doing the cooking and Henry doing his best to find space for everyone to sleep, even if it was just a spot on the floor and a blanket. Nobody seemed to mind.
I decided to spend the night on the porch. No sense in taking up space in the house, especially since I didn’t sleep. I was leaning on the rail, staring out into the darkness, when Anne crept outside to join me. The screen door creaked as she gently eased it shut behind her.
“Jesus, it’s cold out here.”
I shrugged. Even wearing nothing but jeans and a flannel shirt, the freezing air simply brushed across my skin, unable to chill me.
She put her elbows on the porch rail and leaned against me. “That little girl’s name is Katy. In case you were wondering.”
“I’m glad she’s okay.”
“People were asking about you. They want to thank you, ask you what was going on, that kind of stuff.”
“I’ve been here all night. They could have come out.”
“Yeah, standing out here in the freezing cold with your face all pin
ched up and scowly is real inviting. I can’t believe they didn’t rush out to give you a big ol’ hug.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Okay. I get it. First thing tomorrow I’m going to go inside and be the mayor of happy town.”
“Good.” She nudged me with her shoulder and smiled. “Can you believe we saved all of them? I mean, the ones that made it to the forest, anyway. Prime didn’t get a single one.”
“We? I didn’t have anything to do with it. That was all you.”
“Chuck helped.”
“Yeah, after you rescued his ass.”
She laughed. “I guess so.”
“Patrick would have been proud.”
“Maybe. Then again, maybe I don’t care what the old bastard would have thought. I’m proud. I did something that mattered.” A look of astonishment crossed her face. “I mattered.”
“Just like always. I guess you already forgot that you put an end to Piotr and saved the world back at Belmont.”
She took my hand. “We did it together. And if we have to, we’ll do it again.” She looked out into the dark. “And we will, won’t we?”
I thought about the fox and why all of this started in the first place. And then I stopped thinking about it and squeezed Anne’s hand back.
“Probably. But not today.”
And I was content.
Acknowledgments
Thanks once again to award-winning artist Vincent Chong for knocking another one out of the park. You always deliver more and better than I ask for.
See more of Vincent’s work at http://vincentchong-art.co.uk.
I’d also like to thank my editor, Neal Hock, for helping me see the forest for the trees and my copyeditor Cory Whiteland for rescuing me from the land of comma overuse and awkward phrasing. Thanks for making me look like I know what I'm doing, guys. I know it isn't easy.
Also by Michael Langlois
He has the power to Walk between worlds.
His captors think they can hold him.
They’re wrong.
What do you say when offered a lifelong position in the most powerful and corrupt secret organization in mankind’s history?
If you want your life to last longer than the job interview, you say yes.
In exchange for wealth, power, and training for his newly discovered abilities, all Daniel has to do is help them reach a new, unsuspecting world.
To make things worse, a group of desperate escapees pin their thin hopes on him, willing to risk everything on a miracle that Daniel has no idea how to provide.
Shackled with a restraint bracelet, constant surveillance, and superhuman captors, he must outsmart an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and seek freedom in the one place that is left to him, a new world that only he can reach.
Buy it now on Amazon
About the Author
Michael Langlois lives in Texas with his family, two dogs, a cat, and BB, The Most Confident Rabbit in the World. When he’s not playing tabletop board games, video games, or waxing nostalgic about zombies on his blog, he will occasionally stop procrastinating and write something.
You can follow his antics at michael-langlois.net.
Copyright © 2012 Michael Langlois
All Rights Reserved.
Electronic Edition: October 2012
Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) Page 23