by S. A. Hunt
Something rattled inside the tank.
Yahtzee! Robin struggled to her feet in the slippery gore, unscrewing the tank’s gear-shaped cap. She held the tank upside down and shook it. Something tiny fell out, and at first, she thought it was a green bean.
Finger bone. Dyed green from years soaking in gasoline.
“Cuttin’ you off, you Mesopotamian motherfucker!” Robin tossed the gas tank aside and picked up the bone. Pinching it between her armored fingers, she snapped the brittle thing in half.
The goddess of death howled in outrage from the nothing beyond the wall of the world, and the sky shook.
Glowing vapors spewed between Robin’s fingers as if she were holding a supernatural smelling-salt capsule. She inhaled the glittering fog, sucking it through her bloody teeth, and the heart-road’s ectoplasm snaked down her throat, filling her with heat like a belly full of vodka on a cold winter night, stoking some black fire deep inside her.
In seconds, the finger bone was just that—a broken bone in her hands, a bit of fractured calcium without meaning or purpose. She collapsed on her back, waves of white-hot euphoria snapping through her, a tectonic iron core at her center, churning and burning, stones and iron grating against each other.
This was different. She’d absorbed heart-roads before, but this was definitely something else—far more intense, more than a simple internalizing of energies. Before, drawing a heart-road into herself had been like … a cigarette after a session of good sex. This, this, was a blood transfusion from the center of the universe, a cosmic orgasm searing her insides with light, reawakening some dark and strange part of her.
As the euphoria drained from her body, it left her empty, a vessel full of starving fire. Clawing in the dirt, she turned onto her belly. Blood made black mud of the earth underneath her as she pulled herself along the ground, trying to get away from the collapsing mess that used to be Santiago.
Dear God, the hunger, she tried to think through a whirlwind of mental fragments.
Only, it was no longer so simple as “hunger”; it was that satanic need to devour and destroy again, but this time it stood over her: enormous, steel-hard, unavoidable. No resisting it. No longer at the eye of the hurricane, she was the hurricane, swelling, howling, gorging, massive, monstrous.
With every grasp of rock and dirt, tiny pinprick spiders trickled out from under her armored hands, scuttling into the dust. They were oil-black, with Tron-like red racing stripes.
Hello, world, said the warhawk Robin from the surface of a puddle. Her labored breath was deep, metallic, reverberating like a thousand-foot robot. She could feel herself fading away and the demon taking over. Let it flow through you; let Calgon carry you away. That’s right.
This was what her need to fight had always been, hadn’t it?
The bloodlust, the warhawk in the bathroom mirror. The demon half of her trying to come through, come out and drown the human in darkness.
“The Transfiguration,” said her mother Annie, the ghost’s face underlit by the hellfire licking out of Robin’s mouth. “You’re going feral, baby. Losing control. You gotta slap a lid on this while you’re still lucid, or you’re gonna go off the rails and the magicians will have to rein you in.”
Tell her to fuck off, said the warhawk.
“No,” Robin croaked with a buzz-saw voice. She breathed deep, reaching for air, and what came out was that same drowned-engine sound she’d heard in that nightmare house last year: Grrrrrrururuhuhuhuh.
“You don’t want that,” said Annie. “It’s you or them if that happens. So, you gotta fight for me, okay? Stay with me. Stay here.”
Her daughter stared at her with eyes that emitted gaseous, luminescent plasma. “I got this,” Robin said, and turned inward, searching for La Reina’s Transfiguration heart-road. It was there, hidden, coiled in the pit of her throat like a sort of rope-chakra, and she drew it out. Slowly, methodically, as if trying to tailor a dress in a hurricane, she applied the Transfiguration to her body, sewing it into her limbs, restoring her humanity piece by piece.
A lizard wriggled toward her, drawn to the warmth.
The demon pounded it flat with a fist and she fed it to herself as if throwing meat to a lion, tore it apart with her teeth. Cool blood squirted down her chin and immediately burned into sweet smoke.
“Fight it,” said Annie.
Carbon plating over her face cracked, spiderwebbing like fine china. Robin threw the remains of the lizard aside and clawed the armor away, crushing coal in her fist, revealing new, pink skin. Green light still emanated from her eyes, but her face was human again. She peeled the shell away from her skull, and her hair flagged in the desert wind, wet and dark and new.
Tightening her fist, Robin broke the carbon mask with a sharp snap!, letting the pieces tumble through her fingers.
Track 36
They found her lying on Fort Bostock’s desolate runway in the middle of nowhere. Blood left a trail of smears and droplets into the distance. Elisa screeched to a stop and everybody piled out of her truck into a misty drizzle of cold rain. As she got out, she pulled her rifle from behind the seat and opened the bolt, checking the chamber.
“Help me out!” said a frantic voice from inside the camper shell. “I gotta, gotta be there—see her—fuckin’ help me!”
Navathe and Gendreau ran to the tailgate as a very sooty Kenway slid out and stood up on his one leg. Looked like he had the world’s worst sunburn, butter-yellow blisters developing on his face, but he was otherwise intact. The two mages helped him over to the strange figure lying on the ground.
The Osdathregar spear lay by her side, thrumming softly.
Between the protection of the supernatural armor (carbon? Brimstone? They weren’t sure) and Doc G’s ministrations, the face peeking out was fresh, whole, healthy. Everything was human again except for Robin’s left arm and torso … and the horns. Her antlers were broken off, leaving two diabolical goat-horns jutting from her pale forehead, the right one a couple inches longer than the left, just below the hairline.
But they saw a strange, wild, unfamiliar thing in her eyes that made them hesitate. Ragged breath hissed through her teeth like a wounded animal, and even though her face was human, her eyes were still a luminous radium green.
“Looks like she’s having a hard time staying human,” said Navathe. “Is it a good idea to be this close to her?”
Gendreau gave him a sideways look. “We’ve been with her this far. If she was going to go off the deep end, she would have done it back at the hoarder house.” He studied her face as her eyes rolled, focusing on them for just a moment before drifting up to the sky. “Besides, even if she was on the verge of losing her mind, she’s too messed up to be dangerous. She should be in the ER, not lying on a tarmac in the rain. And my God, man, we’re her friends. We can’t abandon her.”
The pyromancer seemed chastised. He got up and paced behind them, glancing over with concern at the girl-creature writhing at their feet. Ironically enough, the demon looked possessed, clawing slowly at the asphalt, eyes wandering.
“What is she wearing?” asked Kenway. “Is that some kind of armor?”
Three terrifyingly nasty stab wounds in her abdomen and chest were still leaking vivid red blood, thick like paint. Thin curds of yellow fat were visible inside, torn muscle fibers, dirt, bits of grass. “Calm your tits. I got this,” Robin told him with a voice like icebergs grinding together: deep, metallic, sibilant. “I can control this. This is nothing, okay? Nothing. Uggghhrrr … got this in the fucking bag. Trust me.”
“I don’t know if she’s wearing the armor or if it is her.” Gendreau squirted a bottle of water into the wounds to wash the debris out, then began the laborious task of closing the holes. A vicious sparkler of red light burst out of his ring, the motes of energy swirling into her wounds like fireflies going down a drain. “Try not to finish Transfiguring yourself right now. You might not survive with these wounds as a full-on human.”
“My
devil-girl,” Kenway cradled her head. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
“I could say the same thing.” Her gleaming green eyes narrowed, studying his dirty face. “What happened? Clubhouse exploded. They said you were inside. Thought you were dead.”
Kenway’s clothes were blackened, with scorched holes over blistered skin, and his eyebrows were gone. “Gas leak in the basement where we were locked up, and the guy with the shotgun ignited it, but we were hiding in a walk-in freezer when it happened. Rook used her telekinesis relic to get us out of there by pushing the debris away from the door.”
“Got a bit of a heavy-duty tan.” Rook joined them, her face as black as a chimney-sweep’s. “But the freezer door took the brunt of the blast.” She forced a smile, rubbing her eyes on her filthy sleeves.
The warhawk paced behind them, eyes glowing, separate from glass and water, a strange ugly Faces of Meth version of Robin Martine, cigarette burns littering her skin, teeth filed to points. The warhawk reflection reached over Navathe’s shoulder and held a finger-gun to his temple. He did not react, and neither did anyone else. First time Robin had ever seen her outside of a mirror, freely inhabiting the real world, and to be honest, if she weren’t on the verge of death, it might have been existentially terrifying.
You’re dying, it said, grinning. He got you, chick. This is it.
Gendreau’s relic ring was a blowtorch of hissing light. He thrust the gush of energy into her wounds, concentrating on knitting the flesh and arteries back together, but the blood was pumping out of the wound too fast to contain.
“Stay with me, Miss Martine,” he said, frantic. “I’m gonna get you through this, I just need you to fight.”
She wheezed through a mouthful of red blood and smoke that stung her lips and tongue. Robin thrashed in pain, spitting, coughing, choking, roaring in that terrifying silver voice. Her black left hand ended in a rake of talons, and she clutched at her friends in fear and fury, tearing the rags of Kenway’s burned shirt. Felt like she was drowning in fire, magma erupting from her belly and pouring out of her face, and sudden panic gave her the strength to grab at every handhold she could see, trying to pull herself out of the flames. But she wasn’t slipping into it; it was coming out of her. No escape. She was dying, her guts and lungs and skin were roasting again, and she was dying, and after the second time in two days, it was horrifying beyond all rational thought.
“The fire is coming out of her heart,” cried Gendreau. “Santiago hit her in the heart; I can see it! That’s where her birthright hid itself away from the Sanctification all along, isn’t it? My God, a heart full of hellfire! That’s why you smell like brimstone when you’re angry!”
The pain was monumental, Biblical, impossible, as if she were being dismantled at the subatomic level by a steel machine made of infinite white-hot needles.
That’s your weakness, demon, said the warhawk, looming invisibly over her friends. Rain hissed and evaporated against her black armor, as if striking a hot griddle. Burn you. Stab you. Beat you. Cut you. You’re unstoppable. Only thing that can kill you is to pierce your heart and let the hellfire out.
Remember that.
“Hold her down,” said Rook, grabbing Robin’s arm and pinning it with her knees. “Before she hurts herself—or one of us.”
The curandero fought sobs. “It’s not working.”
“What?” said Kenway.
“I’m not fast enough. The hellfire is burning her insides.”
“No, no, no.” Kenway cradled Robin in his lap. “Is there not another way? Is there a way these two can, I don’t know, supercharge you somehow?”
“It’s okay,” Robin told him in her grinding steel voice, her eyes unfocusing and going dark as her body gave up on her. “I love you.”
Each heartbeat was a slow, soft stamping of a wooden staff in her chest.
“I love you.”
The hellfire quietened and quelled, extinguishing with a hiss.
Track 37
When the fire went out, it left her adrift in the deepest darkness she had ever known. After a time, she realized that she was lying not on a rainy tarmac but on a dry parquet floor, fuzzy with dust. Extending into the distance was a narrow sort of wooden catwalk in black space.
Shapes loomed at her from the void, drifting toward the parquet catwalk like raised sails, slow and monumental. Great shards of wood and plaster, accompanied by smaller, jagged pieces and stony red bricks. The bricks assembled themselves in piecemeal columns and crags like a jigsaw puzzle, and the tongue-and-groove wood slid into place around it, forming walls. Plaster spread itself over the wood like white peanut butter, hardening instantly. Wallpaper gift-wrapped the structures in damask the red of wine.
Some sort of otherworldly house was building itself around her.
A light came on, blinding her. An electric lantern hung from the ceiling, a fragile-looking china globe in a brass fixture, encircled with painted blue flowers. Robin got the feeling this place existed only when it needed to.
Big dark rectangles gaped in the walls. Doorways. Panels eased into place from the abyss, coalescing from the dark—doors, red doors, with brass knobs and glossy paint. Brass peepholes appeared in the doors, tiny glass lenses glinting.
None of the doors had numbers, just peepholes. Robin got to her feet and went to the nearest door.
Light streamed from the lens; she held up her hand to catch the light and an image appeared like the screen of a movie theater. In her palm was a beach, windy and rocky, and the sun shone in a cloudless sky. Distant cries of a seagull. Lethargic waves pushed endlessly onto the shore.
A woman sat on the beach, her back to the door. She turned to glance back as if she’d sensed someone watching her, then once again to the ocean. Whoever she was, she didn’t seem unhappy. The woman stood and walked away, moving along the shoreline, once stooping to pick up a stone, and an expression of disappointment briefly crossed her face. She chucked it into the ocean.
Robin closed her hand and the image disappeared, and then she gave a short, sharp gasp.
Half-glimpsed in the lantern-light, a figure towered down the hallway, a goliath dressed in mourning black robes that hung open in the front to reveal a pair of enormous breasts and a bell-shaped belly. She was tall and mountainous, her velvet-black arms bulbous with muscle, and she was barefoot. Her head was a cow’s head, black and silky, with guileless black eyes and moon-white horns.
Suspended in the air between those horns was what appeared to be a miniature representation of the Milky Way, a spiderweb of light stretching from horn tip to horn tip. Starry pinpricks migrated throughout the galaxy as it revolved, a subtle but dazzling spindle.
The cow-headed woman glanced at her and walked away into the dark.
Robin followed her.
As they made their way down this hallway, the electric china globes overhead blinked to life, illuminating their progress. Always, the cow-headed woman faded into the dark just as soon as the next light came on, walking ahead of them as if she didn’t need it to see, or she knew where she was going with or without it. Which definitely might have been the case, as the miniature Milky Way threw a faint light on the walls around her like a flashlight shining through clenched fingers.
“Who are you?” asked Robin.
No answer, only the constant and deliberate clunk … clunk … clunk of the cow-woman’s boots—or perhaps they were hooves—reverberating on the wooden floor.
“Where are we going?”
“Your mother awaits,” said a voice that was surprisingly soft and maternal, in a thick accent Robin didn’t recognize. The cow’s mouth did not move; the voice just seemed to be heard as if someone had narrated it over a movie scene, and was also faintly muffled, as if she were speaking through a thick blanket. “Welcome to Cosmotelluria.”
“This is the afterlife?” said Robin. “Not quite what I pictured.”
“The afterlife is not what you picture. It’s how the afterlife pictures you.”
“No,” said the cow-god. “It is called Cosmotelluria.”
“So, Cosmopolitan thinks I’m an old house on the inside?”
“You might say so.”
“Why?”
No answer. Just as well; Robin had the feeling she wouldn’t have liked the answer.
“Could have been worse. At least I’m not a vape shop on the inside.”
They walked.
“What do I do? Feel like I’ve been here way too long already. By now, I should be lying in the back of an ambulance as paramedics electrocute my chest with shock paddles or something.”
The cow-woman paid no attention.
Robin followed her down the corridor, several times through intersections and around corners, passing dozens or perhaps hundreds of red doors whose peepholes sprayed light from private worlds. She paused once to put her hand into one of the cones and the image in her palm was one of a bespectacled man sitting quietly in a massive library, reading from a stack of books as the sun streamed down on him from a tremendous Gothic window.
“These are people’s personal Heavens, aren’t they?” Robin asked the cow-woman.
“These rooms contain whatever you are in want of,” said the figure, whose back was always turned to Robin as she trundled through the mysterious house. “But they do not always contain what you want.”
“Who are you?”
At this, the cow-woman glanced over her broad shoulder, the galaxy turning with her horns. “I do not often hear that question. Most of you are more concerned with where you are and where you are going than who I am or why I am taking you there.”
“Welp,” said Robin, her bare feet padding across the parquet, “I’m asking it now.”
“Some call me the Mistress of the West,” said the cow-woman. “Some call me the House of the Rising Sun. Yet others call me the Mother of Rivers. I am also known as the Lady of Joy. But above all, I am the custodian of this place.”