by Mark Eller
“Where is it?” Heriod demanded. “Where’s the spawn?”
“Gone,” Tessla answered. Releasing her hold on his wrists, she wrapped his huge bulk in her arms and waited patiently while he struggled, waited until he realized her strength. “Why does Belthethsia want to know?”
“Athos is angry.” Heriod gasped. “He won‘t let any hellborn back into Hell until the spawn is dead and the hook returned. Where is it? Belthethsia has to know.”
“I’ll tell you after we kiss,” Tessla replied. Drawing in a breath, she tilted her head, tangled her fingers in his hair, and jerked his mouth to hers. His lips were cold. They rasped like a dry wasp nest.
Tessla breathed into his mouth, gifting him with Athos’s curse. The poison tore into Heriod like a starving wolf ripping entrails from its prey. His teeth clicked violently shut, almost closing on her tongue. Eyes rolling, a putrid odor oozed from his skin.
Moments later, Heriod’s body became slack in her arms. Tessla waited, her lips to his, and the poisoned curse returned. She shuddered when it settled into its accustomed home, but she could not leave it within Heriod’s dead body. Before long, the curse would grow bored and worm its way free only to later inhabit another human who had no defenses. After the human died, it would find another, and then another until none were left.
Refilled by the curse, Tessla opened her arms and allowed Heriod’s body to fall. Within his corpse, his shriveled soul unwound and fell into spiritual dust.
“Jolson left Yylse two days ago.” She had made Heriod a promise. “He travels toward Grace.”
“Now that’s convenient,” a woman’s voice commented. “I have business there myself.”
Belthethsia’s blue soul gleamed muddy dark to Tessla’s twilight eyes. The succubus stood less than ten feet away, a waist high morpho by her side. She gripped Andro’s neck with one hand, holding him aloft so his feet did not touch the ground. Tessla saw her soul become curling worms of puke gray.
When Belthethsia glanced at Heriod, she frowned. “I wasn’t finished with him yet.” She rested the palm of her hand on top of the morpho. At her touch, the morpho’s flesh pulsed, shifted, and formed the semblance of a head.
“You shouldn’t have killed Andro,” Tessla replied. She reached for the poison within her, but, satiated, Athos’s curse would not obey.
“Is this Andro?” Belthethsia asked. She shook the boy and laughed. “He isn’t dead— yet.” Her hand clenched tight. Her eyes danced laughter when Andro’s neck snapped. “Now he’s dead,”
Casually tossing the body aside, Belthethsia, pulled a wispy imp free from her skin. “Let’s you and me have a girl chat. Why is Trelsar trying to protect one miserable spawn? Does he want the war to start early? You know as well as I that the virtuous gods might be strong enough to defeat Athos, but Zorce won’t stand by and watch his son die. He’ll take a hand, and no five gods are as strong as Zorce, especially with Flinstar missing.” After waiting a moment, she smiled. “Well, sister, is it to be war?”
“Trelsar confides his plans to me no more than Athos does to you,” Tessla said. “I only know Jolson must live.”
“Thingy.” Belthethsia held the imp up to her face and gently kissed it. “Its name is Thingy. I owned it long before Trelsar knew it was alive.” Kissing the imp again, she whispered. “Go.”
Tessla did not run. Instead, she opened her mouth to ease the imp’s way. It slid into her, infused her, violated her, and grasped for the edges of her soul. She shuddered when it seeped through her flesh and invaded her spirit. She grinned when the imp touched poison and smoke. Releasing a frustrated hiss, it shot out of her mouth and hid between Belthethsia’s cupped hands.
“Now that is surprising,” Belthethsia said, frowning. Opening her mouth, she swallowed the imp and studied Tessla with hard eyes. “I suppose I’ll have to do this myself.”
And then she emitted her weapon.
Tessla braced herself for the assault, but it was not nearly as bad as she expected. Waves of the succubus’s allure, of longing and desire washed over her, but only a whisper seeped within. The whisper tried to find something solid, lust, desire, any emotion or need which sought to overcome a rational mind, but the whisper failed. Tessla laughed emptily at the succubus. Since her time in Hell, she was nearly an empty shell. If not for duty she would have no reason to continue life.
Belthethsia’s frown deepened. “Trelsar left you no soul— no desire— and I thought Athos a cruel master. You can’t kill me, you know. Your poisons come from Athos, and I’m no small demon. I’m immune.”
“I am strong,” Tessla said, “and fast. I have killed many beings with my hands.” She darted forward to grasp Belthethsia by the jaw and arm. Meat shredded beneath her talons. Jawbone cracked beneath her thumb. An unusual slithering hint of warm satisfaction wormed through Tessla when the succubus’s eyes bulged. Belthethsia struggled, and her strength was great, but it was not nearly enough to free her from Tessla’s grip. Tightening her hold, Tessla heard Belthethsia’s arm snap.
“You killed Andro,” Tessla said. “I find myself mildly displeased.” She slowly increased her grip on Belthethsia’s perfect face and watched dispassionately while the struggling succubus’s jaw warped and popped. “Your death will not be quick.”
And then her legs went numb.
Tessla looked down and cursed. The forgotten morpho had thinned and elongated and thinned again until it became an almost liquid sheet wrapping itself around her legs. Kicking out, she tried to win her way free, but the morpho’s flesh was strong. It flowed to her waist, slithered higher. Twenty eyes, surrounded by flowing flesh, silently giggled.
Grunting, Belthethsia struck Tessla in the face with her free hand. The blow rocked Tessla, and then Belthethsia struck again while the morpho rose even higher. With a wrenching twist, Belthethsia broke free, and Tessla fell like a lightning struck tree. She hit the street and tried to lever herself up on one arm, but the morpho reached out to catch her fingers. It encased them, captured her wrist, and her arm. Releasing a grunting laugh, it flowed out to lock her other arm into place.
Tessla lay on the street, morpho encased, immobile. While she laid there, arms straining against the morpho’s flesh, she calmly watched Belthethsia heal. The bent arm twisted and straightened. Belthethsia’s eyes wept blood while her broken face shifted. Shattered bone crawled, flesh merged, until Belthethsia’s shadowed face was complete, whole, but no longer perfect. Beneath her breath-catching features resided a dark patch of shadow indicating an indented jaw.
Belthethsia rubbed at blood tears and studied Tessla. “Shall we get back to our conversation? I know Thingy went to Grace.” Her voice sounded awkward. Her mouth moved strangely. Resentment and hate radiated from the hellborn when she felt at her deformity. “Why did he go? How? Where? Grace is a large city.”
“I’d tell you,” Tessla answered, “but I’m busy right now.” She tried to move her right arm and failed. Deep within her body the cirweed smoke had grown thin. Deeper still, Athos’s poison stirred. She wondered once again what it would be like to die when she did not own a soul. Looking into the morpho’s flesh with her god created eyes, she saw intertwined web-thin strings and whorls, interconnected and recombined. Two souls, intermingled and very old.
Eyes dripping anger, Belthethsia kicked Tessla in the face. Tessla jerked back. New pain shot through her when her nose broke and then bled. She found the sensation uncomfortable and strange. She had not been this low on smoke since her escape from Hell.
Around them, dozens of people had gathered to watch. None moved near. She saw a city guard join the crowd, and then two, but knew they would not help Trelsar’s Assassin. One guard calmly lit the street’s oil lamps. Another guard, Lexos, watched her and smiled.
“Guess I won’t get fired now,” his silent lips mouthed.
Within her, Athos’s curse stirred and seeped out of the cracks where it hid. Pushing aside the faint remnants of the cirweed smoke, the poison chortled as it
tasted her liver.
“Andro!” Mother Brood’s voice cried out. “That’s my Andro! He’s dead!”
“We can play games, sister,” Belthethsia promised, “but I’d rather not take the time. I can kick your face until it’s pulp, but a ruined mouth will stop you from telling me what I need to know. You’ll heal, and I’ll have to do it all over again. On the other hand, my friend can rip your limbs away and splinter your ribs. It’ll take you much longer to heal and won’t affect your speech at all.” She paused. “Except for the screams. You might have a difficult time talking past your screams.”
“I don’t have a sister,” Tessla said. “Knowing you, I am glad I never did.”
There was a stirring in the crowd. Mother Brood sidled forth, holding something in her hands. A form flashed past a street light, someone with a pulsing blue and overlarge soul. Del?
Obviously irritated by the delay, Belthethsia kicked Tessla’s face again. “You once served Athos. He’s my half-brother so that makes us kin. I like killing kin. Where did my Thingy go?”
Spitting out a jagged tooth, Tessla tasted metallic blood. The morpho constricted tighter while poison ate her insides. Sweat streamed down her face. She could barely breathe. Trelsar spoke in her mind, ordering her to speak.
“I told you. He went to Grace. I know nothing else.”
“Then who does know?” Belthethsia insisted.
“Mathew Changer,” Tessla gasped because Trelsar so ordered. “The half-were. He might know. Mathew told Jolson of Grace.”
“Mathew and I will have a very short conversation,” Belthethsia muttered while fingering her dented jaw. “If it’s any consolation, I hate you for this.” Her foot tapped against the morpho. “Kill her quickly. We’ve little time for play.”
“Damn you!” Mother Brood shouted. Leaping forward, she hit Belthethsia across the head with a wooden club once, and then again. The blows barely staggered the succubus. “You killed my Andro! You killed him!”
Belthethsia struck the woman with a casual arm, knocking Mother Brood five feet back. Plucking another imp from her skin, she raised her hand, only Del was suddenly there, and he held fire in each hand.
“Close your eyes!” he shouted, as he flung a street lamp’s fire pot. Flying inches below Tessla’s head, it broke on the morpho, spilling fluid and flame across its flesh. With a quick twisting throw, Del side-armed the other pot toward Belthethsia. The pot opened and spilled. Belthethsia’s green hair and dark robes blazed. Cursing, she twirled, pulled a knife, and sawed at her burning hair.
The morpho groaned and writhed and burned hellfire. Its silent screech shivered Tessla’s bones. It shook and trembled and spastically danced on the street, griping Tessla in its iron hold, knocking her against brick buildings and hard cobbles, making her head ring like a tower bell as its flames seared her skin and burned her brows. Near her left ear, the morpho’s mouth released a thin whine. Its grip loosened, relaxed, and flowed away. The morpho curled around itself, whimpering until its flames flickered and died. It whined, remained still for a moment, only to screech agony when new flames shot forth, emitting clouds of dark, oily smoke.
Freed, Tessla rolled to her knees and grabbed her cirweed pouch. Opening its draw, she tossed the pouch on Belthethsia’s discarded burning hair. Cirweed spilled out, fell into the flame, and caught. Poison eaten, bleeding from her lips, eyes, and ears, Tessla weakly crawled over to the fire, thrust her face into the smoke, and gratefully sucked in the remnants of bitter weed and burnt hair. Inside her, Athos’s curse curled and writhed and retreated from its meal.
Weary beyond belief, Tessla rose in time to see Belthethsia toss a soul stealing imp at Dell. The imp sailed through the air and darted up her lover’s nose before Del had time to react. Almost instantly, Del’s eyes bulged, and he moaned. A moment passed, another and the imp seeped past Del’s mouth, dragging his beautifully large soul behind it. Legs folding, Del collapsed, leaving the imp hovering in midair. Nearby, Mother Brood crawled weakly across the ground.
Something stirred in Tessla. Something new or perhaps something she had given up long ago. Something burned. Emotion! Anger! Pain! The sensations fired her mind and destroyed her balance. She did not care. Del was dead. Her lover. Her source. Maybe even her friend. Del’s shell lay on the ground while his wondrous soul was clenched in an imp’s insubstantial jaws.
She narrowed her eyes. She growled, and, when the imp began sinking toward the street, she smiled grimly. Del’s soul was too large for it to hold. The imp appeared ill.
“Sweet baby,” Belthethsia cooed. Smoke drifted from her remaining hair, but her burnt scalp and hands were now whole. “Pretty boy.” She held out a commanding hand. The imp floated toward her, but its movements were hesitant, heavy. Dell’s pulsing soul was more than twice its size.
Decision made, Tessla ran three stumbling steps forward and grabbed the imp from the air. Belthethsia chuckled, but her laugh was weak, showing she, too, was on her last legs. Godless healing demanded a tremendous toll.
“What are you doing?” the succubus demanded. “My imp can’t hurt you. You have no soul.”
Face held ridged hard while unfamiliar emotion raged within, Tessla ripped Dell’s soul from the imp’s grasp and threw the imp onto the smoke churning hellfire mound of the morphos. Instantly, the imp burst into flames and was gone. With weak, trembling fingers, Tessla pulled out her pipe and set it between her lips. She put Del’s soul on top of the pipe’s bowl and sucked Del down.
Del’s soul exploded within her. It seeped into the center of her cells. Expanding, it raced to fill a vacuum she had never known existed. His soul was warmth, cold, and pain, a delicious joy she had never experienced, a burst of emotions making her former anger pale into insignificance. Shuddering uncontrollably, Tessla wondered how humans could suffer such intense sensations. She waited for them to fade, but they lived on, a steady beat thundering with the rhythm of her heart.
“What’s this,” Dell’s voice whispered within her mind.
Tessla looked inside herself, looked with an inner vision that was no longer clear. There, deep within her body, a small part of Del had gathered cirweed smoke to itself. This part of Del sent tendrils out, stalked a black area where Athos’s curse crouched and quailed. Del pounced. Poison and cirweed and soul roiled. The curse trembled and fell apart.
Legs shaking beyond her ability to control, Tessla collapsed. The air around her hung thick, and the street felt cold. Overhead, the moon shone large and bright, brighter than she had ever seen anything since the time, long ago, when she left the heavens after Trelsar’s rebuilding. She stared at Belthethsia, at the few people who had not yet run, and saw skin and hair and clothes. She saw faces in the torchlight, faces without shadows, but hard as she tried, she could not see anyone’s soul.
Three city guards looked as if they had regained their courage. Lexos inched closer, hesitated, and pulled his sword. Belthethsia eyed him with a slight frown.
“I’m too weary to deal with this!” she snapped. Another imp oozed out of her skin. This imp, Tessla knew, would be her last. Only the gods of Hell could carry more than two.
Shoulders square, body straight, Belthethsia held the imp in plain view and spoke to the guards. “I’m leaving. If you don’t get excited, I promise I won’t kill you when I return.” She turned her gaze to Tessla. “I know Mathew well. For the right price he’ll tell me where Thingy went.”
Hair burnt, jaw misshapen, Belthethsia walked off with the dignity and presence of a queen. She paused a moment to watch Mother Brood regain her feet, and then she was gone.
“Wonderful,” Del whispered. “Is this your world? Is this how you see?”
“It was,” Tessla answered, wondering how she could protect Jolson with her strength hampered by Dell’s soul.
* * * *
Mercktos watched as a slight breeze tossed strands of white hair about Tessla’s shoulders. Frustrated, he growled deep in his throat. He wanted her again. He wanted to br
eak her. He wanted to hold her. Right now, at this moment, she was tired and weak. Better yet, she looked confused. He could take her. He could drag her back to Hell, but Hell was closed to all hellkind until the hook was returned, closed, even, to Zorce’s right hand.
Tessla turned in his direction but didn’t see him. Even disheveled she was exquisite, white hair, black nails, and pale. He remembered her touch, the smell of her skin, the taste of blood on her lips. For one moment, he felt her hands clutching his neck, pulling his mouth down to hers while dark talons sank into his throat.
He mentally shook those memories away as Tessla walked to the dead child and its caretaker. Crying piteously, the caretaker kneeled on the road, holding the child to her breast.
Mercktos scowled. It hadn’t been necessary for the child to die.
Alarmed by the thought, he shook his head and fought back a disgusted growl. Living with a defective heart was difficult enough. Living among these disease-ridden vermin made it even worse. The damned heart had tainted his mind and sullied his soul. Had he actually been concerned about a dead child? What did one mortal child’s death matter to a devil or even the deaths of a thousand children? Humans lived to be killed.
Mercktos ached to return to Zorce so he could rid himself of the heart, but his god had not forgiven him. He was cursed to live and serve on the middle world until the hook returned to Hell.
Well, if he followed Tessla, she might still lead him to the spawn.
Mercktos sighed and watched Tessla lift the dead child in her arms. When he saw tears on her cheeks, once again, he felt a twinge inside his breast.
He growled. By Athos! He hoped the world fell soon. Wearing the damned heart was a horrible ordeal. He couldn’t survive these pains for long.
Tessla saw him, frowned, and then her lips turned in a slight smile. Parting, they formed one word. “Remember.”
Epilogue
Ludwig woke to discover Harlo standing beside his bed. Around Ludwig’s neck was the chain holding, Tirelle, his magical amulet. On each of his shoulders was cradled the head of a naked woman. Both had been satiated to the point of unconsciousness. By his lust, Ludwig would like to have bragged, but he suspected the previous night’s orgy of drugs and booze had more to do with their unconscious state than his passion. Although Ludwig repeatedly used both women the night before, he wasn’t sure either one noticed or cared.