“Swing.”
Unearthly strength coursed through my body. The sword traced an effortless arc, steel flashing in the candlelight. It felt so easy that at first I thought I had missed. Then I saw that the feverling hung sliced nearly in two, only a few wispy filaments of vapor connecting its halves. And its face—I had never seen a spirit look afraid.
“Again.”
One final swing, and the feverling shredded away to nothing. Satisfaction coiled through me, like a cat licking its whiskers after a kill. I clenched my hand on the sword’s hilt. That feeling had belonged to the revenant, not me.
“Perhaps you aren’t as useless as I feared. Still, there’s something strange about you—you’re listening to me, for one thing…. Oh, what’s this?”
Sister Julienne’s blood pooled at the corner of my vision, shining crimson. I looked away, but it was too late. Everything I saw, the revenant also perceived through my eyes.
“A dead aspirant? What does that make you?” An astonished pause. “You don’t have any training at all, do you?”
“Be quiet.” It hurt to speak, my throat raw from screaming. I rested the sword’s point on the ground and bent to retrieve my dagger.
“I doubt you even know how to dismiss me back into the relic,” it went on, incredulous. “Do you have any grasp of the danger you’re in, human? It’s only a matter of time before I possess your body and take it on a long, merry—”
Its voice cut off with a hiss. I had slapped the dagger against my arm again, raising another welt. In the merciful silence that followed, I tasted a coppery tang in my mouth. When I swiped a hand across my lips, my fingers came away freshly gleaming red. I must have bitten my tongue while convulsing.
The blood looked unnaturally scarlet, almost pulsing in the crypt’s shifting candlelight. It wasn’t just mine; most of it belonged to Sister Julienne. As soon as I had that thought, my vision tunneled, and a rush of vertigo swept through me, turning my knees to water.
Weakness wasn’t an option. Taking measured breaths through my nose, I sheathed my dagger and tucked the reliquary beneath my arm, making sure it was tightly latched as I set foot on the stairs. Though the revenant’s presence had receded, I still felt it evaluating me, circling my defenses like a fox around a henhouse. The moment I let down my guard, it would try to possess me again. That was assuming it got a chance.
“What happens to you if I get killed, revenant?”
“Nothing,” it replied, too quickly.
“You go back to the relic,” I guessed. “If that happens, you’ll be helpless, and the spirits attacking us will destroy you. To be able to protect yourself, you need to keep me alive. That’s why you helped me.”
“Why do you care, you horrid little nun?” it snapped.
“Because you’re going to keep on helping me,” I said grimly. “You don’t have a choice.”
Halfway up the stairs, I could hear the prayers again, muffled by layers of stone. Another few steps, and there came a scream, a splintering of wood. I took the rest of the stairs at a run.
When I burst into the chapel, I was met with a scene of disarray: novices weeping, Sister Iris shouting orders to the nuns. She stood guarding Mother Katherine, who knelt at the altar, deep in prayer. The doors still held, but barely; as I watched, a new sliver opened in the wood, bitten through by a blade.
Sister Iris turned as she heard me enter, her expression relieved for the instant it took her to take in my appearance. Then she definitely stopped looking relieved.
“Artemisia? Where is Sister Julienne?”
I was bleakly aware of how I must look, dripping with gore and clutching a sword. I bolted the crypt’s door and held out the reliquary. “Please keep this safe.”
The blood drained from Sister Iris’s face. “Oh, Artemisia.”
I couldn’t bear the look she was giving me. Would she believe me if I told her I wasn’t possessed? I didn’t know. Wordlessly, I turned from her and walked down the center of the nave, between the pews, conscious of how the prayers and weeping silenced as I passed. I caught a brief glimpse of Marguerite, her mouth hanging open. Ahead, the door shuddered with continuous battering strikes. A crack appeared in the bar.
“Revenant,” I said, ignoring the stares this earned me, the frightened whispers. “Attend me.”
“I’m not your servant,” it hissed. Then, grudgingly, “There are dozens of thralls outside. Be ready.”
Another blow shook the doors. Then they burst open in an explosion of flying splinters.
So many men. A tide of them, stinking in their mud-spattered chain mail, eyes shining silver with ghost-light. To them I must have seemed an easy target, standing alone in their path. My drab gray robes did nothing to distinguish me from the other sisters. I felt the wind blow a mist of rain across my face as they came for me.
The revenant tugged on my arm, like a puppeteer tweaking a string. I lifted it, palm upraised. Power roared up within me like a wildfire, consuming, unstoppable. A push, and the soldiers halted as though they had slammed into an invisible barrier. A twist, and every last one fell to his knees, seizing. Their mouths stretched wide; a torrent of vapor poured from them as they jerked and trembled and at last slumped unconscious to the floor.
I swayed forward as the last of the revenant’s power funneled out of my body. The ground pitched beneath my feet, and dark spots bloomed across my vision. I caught my weight on the sword, its point sunk into the nave’s carpet.
The evicted spirits roiled above the soldiers in a writhing, disoriented mass. Some of the men stirred and groaned. Alive, but in no condition to join the battle.
“They’re at their weakest now. Stop dawdling and destroy them before they regain their senses. Or is my power too much for you, nun?”
In answer, I stubbornly hefted the sword and staggered forward. A flash of startled approval came from the revenant. Strength surged into my limbs, quickening my steps to a run. My sword sang through the air, effortlessly cleaving the nearest spirit to ribbons just as it began to take shape.
“On your left!”
I swung around, intercepting a gaunt that had flickered into existence beside me. Its claws brushed my cheek, but the touch left only a faint chill in place of the searing cold of blight. A second stroke reduced it to tatters.
The revenant must have sensed my surprise. “I can protect you from blight, as long as I’m not trying to do too many other things at the same time. But that’s all. Swords, arrows, axes—anything that belongs to the physical world can still harm your pathetic flesh vessel.”
It was probably telling the truth, but I felt unstoppable. Spirits fell before me like wheat to a threshing. The exertion filled me with an awareness of every heartbeat, every breath that expanded my lungs, the charged smell of rain and stone from the storm outside. Even the sticky heat of the sword’s leather grip felt new and wondrous. I had never realized what a miracle it was simply to have a body—to be alive, to feel.
The revenant. This was the revenant’s pleasure coursing through me, sharing my human senses.
Motion flickered at the periphery of my vision. The sisters had joined the battle, their daggers flashing like quicksilver. Now that the soldiers had fallen, they were able to fight.
More thralls crowded the chapel’s doorway. I turned to face them. The revenant’s power welled up again in my outstretched hand, and this time I was prepared for the push, the twist, the emptying rush of its force flung outward. I barely stumbled as I pressed forward, weaving around the men’s unconscious bodies strewn across the floor.
A strange ripple in the air came as my only warning of something amiss. Then an unearthly wail filled the chapel, and pain split my skull. I doubled over, the sound grinding relentlessly in my ears. Through a haze of agony I saw the hangings on the walls billow in a ghostly wind. The flames of the candles blew sideways, and then they snuffed out. Sisters fell clutching their heads.
A pale shape rose from the muddle of spirits, veiled in si
lvery radiance. Diaphanous garments swirled around its slender form. Though it had a coldly beautiful face, its eyes were terrible, stark and staring with rage. The cry that poured from its lips stretched on and on without breath.
“A fury,” the revenant hissed, sounding as distressed as I felt. “Your head—I had forgotten—” Pained, it broke off. A whisper of numbing cold traveled up my spine. The throbbing in my head grew bearable, but my dread didn’t ease.
I had never expected to see a fury in my lifetime. They were Fourth Order spirits born from victims of murder. In our history lessons, we had read about a single fury decimating entire companies of soldiers during the War of Martyrs, incapacitating dozens of men at a time with their paralyzing scream.
The fury raised a delicate hand and pointed toward the back of the chapel. Faster than I could react, the mass of newly expelled spirits streamed past me, re-forming into recognizable shapes as they boiled over the pews. Gaunts flickered ahead of the pack, darting here and there as they sought paths between the curls of incense. I started after them, but my muscles locked. The revenant was straining against me.
“Leave them. The fury is their leader. It’s a more important target.”
“But—”
“Can you fight in a dozen places at once?” it snarled. “Destroy the fury, and the rest will follow.”
The revenant was right. The sisters wouldn’t be able to defend themselves until the fury’s cry ceased. But I physically couldn’t make myself turn my back on the novices. Only Sister Iris and the lay sisters remained close enough to the altar to defend them. Sophia had found a candlestick and was clutching it as a weapon, her face screwed up with pain. Any moment now the spirits would find a way through the incense, and there were so many—
I had forgotten Mother Katherine. Serenely, she rose from her position kneeling at the altar and touched her amber ring.
For a disorienting moment, it seemed that two figures occupied the space where she stood. There was Mother Katherine, white-haired and frail, and there was also a hulking, armored shape looming above her, its shoulders bristling with broken spears and arrows. It held a giant notched broadsword, which came swinging down like an executioner’s blade.
When the weapon struck the floor, a shock wave rippled outward from the point of impact, violently tearing through the first spirits it encountered and flinging back the rest. A gaunt shrieked as it struck a hanging censer and dissolved within the smoke.
“Have you seen your fill? Move!”
I was already turning, running. The fury took no notice of me until my sword whistled toward it. Then it pinned me with its wrathful gaze and shifted just enough that the blade harmlessly soared past, biting deep into the wood of a pew instead. I planted a boot on the armrest and wrenched the sword free.
“Behind you. Wait—cover your eyes!”
Just as the revenant shouted its warning, the fury’s wail intensified to a deafening shriek. I flung a protective arm in front of my face as the chapel’s windows shattered inward, filling the air with glinting shards of colored glass. A bright line of pain sliced across my neck; another scored my ankle below the hem of my robes. When the wail cut off with a final wretched sob, someone was screaming.
I recognized the voice. Sister Iris.
The fury looked hungrily toward the altar. In a flash it plunged away, swooping up the nave. I pursued it, broken glass crunching beneath my shoes. Wind-lashed rain gusted across the aisle, clearing the air of incense smoke. Mother Katherine had collapsed beside the altar, and Sister Iris held her, frantically touching her face.
“My reliquary,” the revenant hissed.
The reliquary lay on the floor, unguarded. That was the fury’s target. But all around it sisters were fighting for their lives. Some had already fallen, nursing blighted wounds, as others defended them from multiple spirits simultaneously.
The revenant didn’t see any of this, I sensed—its attention was locked on the reliquary as though nothing else existed. Nausea clenched my gut at the writhing turmoil of its emotions. Saint Eugenia’s relic was at once its ancient, hated prison and its only fragile protection against oblivion.
I flung myself into the fray. My sword felled one spirit after another, but there were too many. I couldn’t reach the fury, now circling above the altar, covetously eyeing an injured girl who lay curled on the floor below, her chestnut hair spilled across the carpet. Marguerite. Weakened, she had become an ideal target for possession.
In my head the revenant spat, frantic: “The moment the fury possesses that girl, it will use her body to destroy my relic.”
I cut down a feverling in my path. Through clenched teeth, I said, “Then don’t give it a chance. Force it from her body, like you did before.” Nearby a sister cried out, mobbed by several spirits at once.
“It will resist. We’ve lost the advantage of surprise—this time it will sink in its claws.” Panic scrabbled at my ribs. I couldn’t tell the revenant’s rising desperation apart from my own. “Give me more control, nun. Let me end this. I have the power; you only need to let me use it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Sophia swing her candlestick at a hovering spirit. The metal wasn’t consecrated and had no effect except to draw the spirit’s attention. It was a frostfain, icicles hanging like a beard from its rime-encrusted face.
If I unleashed the revenant, I wasn’t sure I could subdue it again afterward. But I was out of time. I had no choice. Above my head, the fury was gathering itself to pounce. The frostfain was reaching for Sophia.
“Do it,” I said, and threw aside my sword.
The revenant’s elation tore through me like an inferno. Silver hazed my vision. I felt a spreading at my back, the lifting and unfurling of a great pair of wings. Every face, spirit and human, turned and beheld me with fear.
Ghostly flames licked over my body. There came a pulse like a wingbeat, and the silver fire roared forth, blazing across the floor, over the pews, up the walls, dancing cold across the beams of the vaulted ceiling. The sisters cried out and shrank back as every spirit flared bright, like scraps of paper igniting in a pyre. And then they snuffed out, consumed, as the revenant howled and howled.
It wasn’t finished. The flames licked higher. I felt the ghost-fire spill out the broken windows, across the convent’s grounds. I felt it tearing through the crypt, through the winding tunnels of the catacombs, devouring every lingering shade in its path. I felt all those things as though the fire had become an extension of my own body.
And I felt life. The grass, the trees as the flames swept outward, the soldiers unconscious on the floor, the nuns cowering in front of me. Even the worms and beetles that crawled unseen beneath the soil. Hunger yawned inside my chest. I could consume them all.
No. That was what the revenant wanted, not me. “No,” I said out loud.
The ghost-fire vanished. In the darkness that followed, I dropped to the floor in agony. The revenant thrashed inside my body like an animal in a cage. My fingers tore at my own skin, at the carpet, at the broken glass surrounding me. I surrendered control of my left hand to focus on my right and reached down to draw my dagger. I gripped it with all my strength.
“I won’t go back,” the revenant hissed, its spiteful voice laced with venom. “Do you know what it’s like, being trapped in a relic for hundreds of years? I’ll kill every wretched nun in this place before I let them put me back! I’ll make them regret the day they imprisoned me.”
Inch by agonizing inch, I pulled the dagger to my breast. I felt the revenant’s awareness latch on to the weapon. Scornful, it laughed.
“That won’t work again, nun. This body is mine. All you can do now is delay me, and whatever you try, it will hurt you as much as it hurts me—”
The dagger pressed against my skin, a bright, chill point. The revenant froze.
“You won’t,” it said.
I pushed. Blood trickled wet down my stomach.
“You’re bluffing.”
&nb
sp; I had studied anatomy under the Gray Sisters’ tutelage, and knew exactly how to angle the blade to drive it up between my ribs and into my heart.
“Stop that,” the revenant snapped, exerting itself on my arm to no avail. “I said stop!”
“You won’t possess me.” My voice barely sounded human. “If I have to take my own life to stop you, I will.”
“You idiot! You have no idea what you’re doing. If you die while I’m still in your body, our souls will become entangled—you’ll be imprisoned with me in the reliquary!”
“Then I pity you, revenant.”
“What?” it seethed.
“You’ll be trapped with me forever. After a few days, you’ll beg for your relic’s destruction just to get away from me.”
“You’re insane!” it howled. It lashed out with renewed fury, but I knew that I had won. I grimly held on as it railed against its fate, its deliberate struggle giving way to frenzied clawing, clawing and shrieking, wordless in its rage. And as my consciousness faded, I gripped it tightly and bore it down with me into the dark.
FIVE
I burned with fever. I had been split into two halves, and both were trying to devour the other. I twisted in sweat-dampened sheets, seeing the faces of nuns warp above me, my body shoved down again and again by their restraining hands. Prayers stung my ears; incense scoured my lungs like poison. My mouth was pried open and a bitter syrup poured down my throat. After that I fell still, my thoughts lurching strangely to and fro.
I loved the nuns, but I also despised them. There was something terrible about being their prisoner. They would lock me in a dark box and leave me there forever. Sometimes they would even pray about the Lady’s mercy while they did it. Wretched nuns! All I cared about was not going back into that box. I would do anything, anything…
“I’ll do anything,” I moaned aloud. “Please.”
Sister Iris’s face hovered above me. There was a cut on her forehead, which made me think about shards of glass flying through the air. How long ago had that happened? The cut was already scabbed over and beginning to heal.
Vespertine Page 5